Shop accidents!

[TomE]

Not really a shop accident, but for the last 17 years my "shop" has been horse barns with broodmares and youngsters.  We had purchased a mare that hadn't been handled much.  I getting to know her and trimming a hind foot when she decided to jump through/over me.  She didn't make it and broke 3 long bones in my foot, although I didn't know it at the time.

A veterinarian friend stopped by the next day and offered to take some x-rays.  He determined the foot was broken.  I made an appointment with a foot/ankle surgeon and took the x-rays along.  During the appointment a thunderstorm knocked out the power and they said I'd need to come back for x-rays.  I told them I happened to have my own x-rays in my backpack.  The surgeon was impressed and said he gets x-rays from podiatrists that don't even look like a foot.  I told him that equine vets have experience radiographing patients that are less cooperative than me.  So he put me in a walking cast and sent me on my way.

Twelve years later the mare and I are like two flies on a donkey's ass.  She produced a pretty black filly this year and is pregnant for next year's foal.  She's in her late teens and this might be her last foal.  She will retire here as a babysitter of weanling foals.

 

[Dwight]

I have been very fortunate thru the years . . .  lots of times and places . . .  stuff coulda done me in . . . 

Safety gear has been part of it . . .  staying alert is a part of it . . .  not taking crazy chances . . .  all have helped out.

My guardian angel did his thing a couple weeks ago though . . . I have a table saw I bought without a blade guard . . .  got it ordered . . .  was using it before the guard got here.

I sawed down a 24 inch or so piece of 1 x 4 down to 1 x 3 or so . . . had both pieces from the other end of the saw . . . was bringing them back to me . . .  over top of the saw . . . and somehow the big piece slipped or something in my hand . . . fell down to the blade that was slowing down . . . hit it just so it would become a 1 x 3 pine rocket.

Thing caught me perfectly on my upper gum line . . . above my teeth . . . below my nose.  I looked like the guy who just lost to Mike Tyson or something for a couple of days.

Honestly . . .  my worst industrial accident ever.  

I got a hole burned in my thumb by 450 Volts aboard ship  . . .  didn't really even hurt . . .  even though I jumped like a white tail bunny . . . that was the second worst . . . 

Worked maintenance electrician and mechanic for 30 some years . . . 4 of em in the Navy . . .  climbed more ladders than I'd like to talk about . . .  used more power tools than I could probably name off in the next hour . . . 

Got a sneaking hunch  my guardian angel will wipe his brow and  say . . . "Finally . . . he's here . . . " when I walk thru the pearly gate . . .  as he has done a great job for me down thru the years.

May God bless,

Dwight

[Sheilajeanne]

My cousin's husband used to have an antique business. He would often restore antique furniture and sell it. One day, he was pushing a piece of wood through the band saw, and was using his hand to push it instead of the safer (proper)way of using a scrap piece of wood. The saw blade hit a hidden nail, his hand was pulled into the blade and he lost two fingers. The hospital managed to re-attach one of them, but the other was too badly mangled.

I don't have any major work-related accidents to report, though working with horses has left me with a few sore joints and scars. Stupidest accident was when I put a pitchfork through my rubber boot while forking manure. Fortunately, I was wearing two pairs of socks and the skin wasn't broken! I think I'd had a very late night the day before, so wasn't all that wide awake! 

Worst  horse related accident - was riding a young mare recently retired from the track. The stable had recently bought her as a school horse. They only teach the racehorses to run in the one direction, so when the instructor told us to canter, she picked up the wrong lead. She was also feeling really fresh, so she took off like she was going out of the starting gate at the track. When she hit the corner of the arena, I think she must have tried to change leads, got her legs all tied up in a knot, and crashed into the wall. 

Next thing I know, I'm lying in the dirt, my watch is ripped off my wrist, the knee of my britches is ripped open, and I've got a huge bruise above the knee and another one below the knee and everything is spinning (mild concussion).

The instructor comes over and asks if I'm okay. I shake my head, which is still spinning. Now this was the funny part. Next thing I know, I look up and HE is up on my horse, checking to see if SHE is okay!    

Eventually I managed to get back up on my feet, and took the horse back to her stall. I'd ridden that horse several times, and had mucked out her stall that morning, but couldn't remember where it was - had to ask someone!  

Yeah, definitely a bit concussed! 

Edited July 15 by Sheilajeanne

[chuck123wapati]

I haven't had relativly safe job since i was 14.  I broke out in the oil patch at 18 and spent seven years working on rigs, back when heavy drug and alcohol use was almost a requisite for employment,  then spent 30 years working in a prison maintenance shop, teaching dried out inmates how to hold a job. The last 15 years as the manager of an all-trades physical plant.  I've seen my share of really stupid accidents in my life, some deadly, done a few myself, and luckily survived like Dwight by the grace of god. Really smart people are the worst at safety IMO because they are smart enough to know better but "it'll never happen to them", idiots come in a close second because they just won't do it, followed by the guys that have "done it all their lives that way". I've taught, reprimanded and worked with all of them lol. I could gross ya'all out with the gore, but i won't. Take the small, mundane safety equipment as seriously as the rest of your gear and equipment lest you be half blind and deaf at 66 like I am, its no fun saying huh all the time, makes you feel stupid.

And yes, I said idiots lol 

[Cumberland Highpower]

My dad was a bricklayer and one summer when i was 12 we were putting up a pretty tall chimney at a neighbor's lodge.   I fell 3 stories off the scaffolding when I slipped on a bit of grit.   
After laying in the dirt and eating a little somehow I pulled myself together and got up.  

We took the rest of the day off work.

Edited July 15 by Cumberland Highpower

[Dwight]

1 hour ago, chuck123wapati said:

 Take the small, mundane safety equipment as seriously as the rest of your gear and equipment lest you be half blind and deaf at 66 like I am, its no fun saying huh all the time, makes you feel stupid.

The small mundane safety equipment was called "hearing protection" . . .  on two destroyers with 5 inch / 38 twin gun mounts.  (that's a bullet that's 5 inches in diameter . . . weighs 39 pounds . . . and can land 12 miles away . . . guaranteed within 500 feet of your landmark  . . .  the 38 means the barrel is 38 times the diameter of the bullet)

We almost pulled up along side ammo ships . . . off loaded the ammo straight to the gun mounts and let er fly.  Actually would get done with the bombardment . . .  cut the rudder . . . full speed ahead . . . out to the ammo ship in the South China Sea . . .  hated like nobody's business to get involved in any of that exercise.

There were times when one would have thought everyone except the guys down in the engine spaces were deaf.  After a couple hundred rounds . . . if you were close enough . . .  your body would shake with every loud noise . . . and you said "huh" for several hours.  

My first ship did not get "official" recognition for it . . . but we just may have been THE first ship to drop ammo on the Ho Chi Minh trail.  We were with the group of ships that spent a bunch of $$$ on 5 inch and 8 inch boo-letts . . .  messing with Charlie in the early spring of 1965 . . . pock marking the trail for miles in either direction.

Yeah . . .  little orange rubber ear plugs would have been darn near wonderful . . .  just had not been invented yet.

May God bless,

Dwight

[fredk]

I've not had serious work place accidents. The worst I've had was dropping a 5lb club hammer on me foot. It missed the steel toe cap of the boot and got the foot where it was unprotected

I've done plenty of things that should have put me in hospital or the morgue. Like lighting up a ceegar in a paint spraying area just after the painter chap had done a lot of cellulose paint spraying. That only blew the door and a window open.

Or my mechs and I used to race the garage heaters down the drive. The space heater worked like a jet engine in reverse; a small air intake pulled air thru to a sparking plug and a mixture of paraffin oil, and hot burning gasses out the rear end. We found we could turn the process around and have a jet engine. Strapped to a mech under-car dolly it could shift. So we raced them. They needed electricity for the sparking plugs so we fitted the same length of cable to each. Fired them up and sent out of the workshop and down the drive way. Of course the cable pulled out but the rockets would go on further. The record was 175 feet. It would have been further but a small ruined cottage got in the way. Had several police visits about 'mysterious' objects flying about

Got all me fingers and toes, but the hearing ain't so good. 35 years of riding noisy motorcycles and 30 years of attending noisy motor sports has ruined it. I tried ear plug a couple of times but it seriously affected my sense of balance and I nearly crashed with them in. Never used them after that 

 

[Digit]

At 42 I'm still pretty unscathed, apart from the occasional flesh wound (scratches, punctures, cuts, mildly crushed limbs, broken nails) but I've never been seriously wounded. I cracked a shoulder blade once by driving my bike straight while the road curved and I hit a crash barrier at about 80km/h (50 mph) and I also dislocated a shoulder once when falling during a hike. Lucky for me, neither of those accidents had any lasting damage.

The only lasting damage I have is caused by spending an evening next to a thickness planer without hearing protection. I spent a few weeks going crazy with tinnitus, after which it slowly died away, together with the ability to hear certain frequencies. I'm still lucky the tinnitus didn't last (it does come back when I'm tired though) and I only have have around 12dB hearing loss.
Since then I always wear hearing protection when working with machines or driving my bike. During my bike crash I was lucky to wear leather and since then I've ditched my textile bike gear.

[billybopp]

My first rock concert was Ted Nugent in 1980.  We rolled down the windows on the drive home, and it took a minute or so to realize we couldn't hear any wind noise!  I'm convinced my hearing still isn't entirely back to what it was before!

Does that count??

-Bill

[toxo]

In a previous life I was a fabricator/welder using stick welding and I had to visit The Royal Eye Hospital in London a few times. Because the slag is non metallic they can't take it out with a magnet. They have to dig it out. The first time I put my chin on the black and chrome contraption the guy on the other side comes at you with this spikey thing, shines a really powerful light in your eye and says "Don't move, don't blink" and then pluck pluck. Believe me with the tears falling down you face you don't move and you don't blink.

When I was done a big black nurse put drops in my eye and started to bandage me up. It got tighter and tighter and I think I might have fainted. (I was only a whippersnapper). My trauma didn't end there ........

I'm outside waiting at a request bus stop at the end of a long wide road which is a one way. The buses turn into the road about 250yards away and if no-one has their arm out on my side they keep over to the far side ready to turn right. Half an hour later, there's me still there because I couldn't see the number on the bus with my one eye until it was too late and he was turning right across the road. Eventually I learned to hail whatever bus turned around that corner.